**Newcastle United have now dropped 25 points from winning positions this season, which is utterly indefensible, no matter how you look at it.**
Without getting into the Eddie Howe debate, it really doesn’t matter which side of the debate you fall on; we can all agree that our inability to hold onto a lead is a huge problem.
We’d hoped that after having time on the training pitch with his first team for the first time since August, Eddie Howe and his coaching team might have found a way to address the issues that have plagued our season, but just five minutes into the clash with Crystal Palace, [it was clear that absolutely nothing had changed.](https://www.nufcblog.co.uk/2026/04/12/dreadful-toon-do-it-again-crystal-palace-2-1-newcastle/)
Newcastle took the lead late in the first half, and my first reaction was to turn to my Dad and say, “And that’s us done, now”. I said it in jest, expecting that those days were behind us; little did I know.
Once again, our lead was taken away from us late on, and then a costly error in the last minute took away our one point too. As Aaron Ramsdale told [Sky Sports](https://www.skysports.com/football/crystal-palace-vs-newcastle-united/live/531443) at full-time, that has been the story of our season.
> _“It’s probably the story of our season at the minute – getting into winning positions and now being able to hold onto the lead._
>
> _“It’s something we can’t put our finger on. We’re trying our hardest to come up with something. On another day, we could’ve gone two or three goals up, but it wasn’t to be._
>
> _“We’ve come away from a game we dominated and there wasn’t much in the game to losing.”_
We’re not sure we’d agree with Ramsdale that we ‘dominated’ the game, mind. We were probably the better team, but it was such a turgid game that had a pigeon descended onto the pitch and touched the ball, it would have been given Player of the Match.
Also, the claim that on another day we’d have gone “two or three goals up” doesn’t hold much water either; we wouldn’t be having this discussion if that were the case. Quite clearly, we’re not capable of going two or three up. We think the job is done at one.
The pressure is surely mounting now. Not helped by Sunderland opening a four-point gap on us in the table after beating Spurs. For those of you who have to go to work tomorrow and face a Mackem, we hope you get a coffee down you before that meeting occurs.